20 Jan 2002 @ 14:43
The distance between our intentions and experience of marriage on one hand, and the reality it presents on the other, indicates how far removed from consciousness and reason marriage can be. Marriage has less to do with conscious intention and will than with deeper levels of soul. In order to gain insight into marriage and its problems, we have to dig deeper than the familiar therapeutic investigation into parental influences, childhood traumas, and illusions of romantic love. The soul always reaches deeper than we expect, especially in marriage, which lies far beneath matters of communication and even interpersonal relationship, touching areas of absolute importance to a meaningful and soulful life. We approach its soul when we understand that marriage is a mystery, a sacrament, as some religions say…a sacred symbolic act.
In order to grasp this sacred symbolic level, we need to set aside the modern penchant for scientific social analysis and instead look to sacred stories for instruction. Scientific analysis and therapeutic theories leave out the sacred dimension, and therefore they always come up wanting in the portrayals of marriage. But stories that evoke a mythic imagination, however simple they may be, offer us an opportunity to look at the soul's role in what is sometimes treated merely as an interpersonal structure.
Thomas Moore: "Care of the Soul". More >
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